Greece’s parliament approved a bill allowing civil marriages between people of the same sex, which was applauded by supporters of the rights of the LGBT community, BTA reported, citing Reuters.
The law gives same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children and comes after decades of campaigning by the LGBT community for marriage equality in the socially conservative Balkan country.
Greece is one of the first Orthodox Christian countries to allow such marriages, according to Reuters.
“This is a historic moment,” Stella Belia, head of same-sex parenting group Rainbow Families, told Reuters. “It is a day of joy.”
The bill was approved by 176 MPs in the 300-seat parliament and will become law when it is published in the Official State Gazette.
Although members of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s cabinet from the center-right New Democracy party abstained or voted against the bill, it received sufficient support from the left-wing opposition in a rare show of cross-party unity and despite contentious debates.
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